AI trucks 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Every start-up founder hopes he or she can make a product or service good enough that people will choose to buy it. Lots of those businesses fail - because they were wrong about people wanting it, or because they couldn't manage their cash flow, etc., etc.

Starsky Robotics was one of the world's most promising start-ups. But just this month its co-founder and CEO, Stefan, closed the doors. 

He wrote a piece about why it failed. There were multiple factors, but he thinks the main reason is that artificial intelligence (AI) for autonomous vehicles can't live up to the hype. It may be ten years from giving us the safety we must have to achieve the big self-driving dream that many people thought was right around the corner.

It's hard seeing your dream die. But unless there's some big breakthroughs soon, the lack of substantial AI progress is going to kill more dreams than just Stefan's.

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AI trucks 1

Starsky Robotics existed to put autonomous long-haul trucks on freeways. Human drivers would remotely take trucks onto and back off the highway, which is the trickier part of the trip. 

They wanted to combine what AI is good at with what humans are good at - to improve and save human lives. 

Here's their good idea in four minutes, their vision, narrated by the co-founder:



Hopes were high for this concept. But the dream died.

(cont'd tomorrow)

His own words 2

The Iranian refugee story:

"I was nine years old when I decided that I hated God. I hated him because I believed he hated me first."

A soldier called David up in front of a school assembly during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. He quoted from the Quran and said he was going to kill the boy to send a message to supporters of the old regime. The school principal stopped it.

After rushing home, his father told him they were going to flee Iran. They left everything they loved - all because of religion gone wrong, in his view. They made it to Germany, where his mother got a quirky idea.

She suggested that they pray to the "God of America, Jesus" that they would get into the U.S. and they wound up making their home in Texas. At first bullied in school, David became friends with genuine Christians. One of the Bible's stories came alive to him when he read it, and he "trusted Jesus."

Read his whole story including his family's reaction here. This is David Nasser, Senior Vice President for Spiritual Development at Liberty University.

Quarantine help

As we care about the health of our neighbors, we also care about their financial needs. We don't want them to be sick, and neither do we want them to be financially ruined by loss of income and the terror of unpaid bills.

Servers, chefs, managers at closed restaurants and bars suddenly have no income through no fault of their own. Don't forget the owners as well, who have zero customer traffic coming through the doors. 

Vacations at hotels, cruise lines and resorts are cancelled. Those people are out of work now, in addition to their affected industries like trash hauling, laundry and cleaning services.

Here at our house we occasionally go for take-out, check in with neighbors, friends and family, and take a walk every day. Walking the neighborhood, I learned that an elderly woman who lives alone had a stroke recently. So I walked back with my phone number which she can use if needed. 

Like so many have said, we're all in this together and we can think of things that may help each other  (read this article for ideas).

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Top fuel 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Some things that yesterday's bar chart race tells us about the sources of energy here in America:

• Nuclear power provides about 20% of our electricity and has done so reliably for about 30 years - with zero carbon emissions.
• Solar power has never been a big source, not contributing over 1% of our electricity til 2017. Actually, it still was only 1.75% last year.
• Hydroelectric power used to contribute almost a third back in 1949 but has fallen steadily. Last year its share was 6-8%.
• Wind power generated 9% of U.S. electricity last year. 

But the biggest impact on America's production of electricity is the role played by natural gas. 

*It's a product of our free market. Remarkable innovation in shale gas hydro-fracturing technology enabled companies to save money in capturing it. That means natural gas can be offered for a lower price. That means success in the electrical power business. That means much less in carbon dioxide emissions in America.

*Everybody is better off.

from Carpe Diem

Top fuel

What fuel historically produced most of the electricity generated in the U.S. since 1949? Coal. But by 2019 coal was generating less than a quarter of all U.S. electricity.

Natural gas overtook coal as the fuel which produces most of our electricity five years ago. By 2019 natural gas generated about 38% of our electricity.

Check out this bar chart race showing "U.S. Electricity Generation by Energy Source (%), 1949-2019" (I have been unable to embed it here on my blog).

This is the biggest reason U.S. CO2 emissions have been tumbling. Coal plants have to some degree cleaned up their operations, but natural gas plants emit far less CO2 to begin with.

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(cont'd tomorrow)

Hoarding stopped

"A supermarket in Denmark got tired of people hoarding hand sanitizer, so came up with their own way of stopping it."

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Clearview AI 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Clearview's artificial intelligence really does help law enforcement agencies to "reliably and lawfully" identify both victims and perpetrators of crimes, granted. 

But the uncomfortable questions come up: Are we okay with being watched without our knowledge or consent as we go about our normal lives? Is this like Chinese-style surveillance of everybody? New Jersey and San Francisco enacted laws banning it.

Clearview AI's intention is noble, to help find criminals.  But the technology is out there to access our personal identity with any photo that someone might take. There's no doubt that someone with very non-noble intentions will use it. Or, a government will use it for political reasons.

The real threat that AI poses is the "I" that controls it.

Clearview AI

Co-founder of PayPal (along with Elon Musk), Peter Thiel is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, i.e. he has started new businesses and invests in other people's businesses (like Facebook). He has a knack for discerning good business ideas and then loaning them money.

Clearview AI started in 2017, and Thiel invested in it. According to their website, "Clearview is a new research tool used by law enforcement agencies to identify perpetrators and victims of crimes." 

And how does it do this? With facial recognition technology (FRT). 

We're all familiar with security cameras in public places, like retail stores, which can be reviewed by law enforcement if a crime takes place. Facial recognition technology goes a step beyond -- it identifies the face in the video or photo as a certain individual in its data bank. 

 Clearview's data bank of individual faces is immense: three billion photos.

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(cont'd tomorrow)

Together apart

"Life during the corona virus pandemic"

Staying together apart has never been so easy.

Quarantine has always been a strategy to prevent the spread of contagious disease, and it meant that you had no contact with your social circles. But our digital infrastructure enables us to stay in touch differently.

Online meetings, chatting, classes -- you don't have to lose touch even while in quarantine. Today, it leaves you alone with the best information delivery system ever conceived.

Critics often denounce technology/social media for reducing face-to-face conversation between people, but in our present circumstance technology is paying off with relationships maintained during quarantine (or social distancing).

Some say that businesses will never retreat from this model. If a company didn't embrace it before, because it was not essential, they're fully into it now and likely will remain so to some degree. For some employees, working remotely/at home is the ideal.

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Flatten 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Slowing down infection, "flattening the curve," restricts more and more social interaction. Here in Minnesota it has extended to lots of entertainment and non-essentials, and now to schools.

Home Shows, Lions Meetings, Boy Scouts' pancake breakfasts, the closings accelerate.

Maybe you've seen what some Italians are doing while their country locks down: they're coming out to their balconies and singing opera 😊

The elegant Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers offered this attitude adjustment decades ago:

“There may be trouble ahead. But while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance, let’s face the music and dance!”

Flatten

Here in Minnesota where I live, just a few dozen people have tested positive for corona virus. But store shelves look surprisingly sparse as people stock up. Many events have closed. For some, it looks like media-induced panic that's unjustified.

But there's a different narrative that might explain why extreme measures (like school closings) are taken despite the fact that only a small portion of the population seems affected so far. It's something that medical professionals call "flattening the curve."

They expect a large number of people will be infected. But instead of a very fast spread of the disease, a big spike of infections, the number of cases will be spread out over a couple of months - because of the strategies being taken to slow it down.

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With a slower spread of the virus, hospital and health care providers will not be overwhelmed. Lives will be saved and the social impact will be mitigated. That's the narrative. 

from Forbes

Watched 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

A Chinese document full of details about the lives of 300+ people of Uyghur ethnicity was leaked to a Uyghur young man living in The Netherlands. He and a friend managed to release it to media, and the world is getting another look at surveillance in Xinjiang.

photo of military police in Xinjiang

A woman (Rosinza) living now in Turkey found her detained sister's name on the Chinese report. "[I]n a spreadsheet kept by local officials, her entire family's lives are recorded at length along with their jobs, their religious activity, their trustworthiness and their level of cooperation with the authorities." Rosinza's sister was detained for having too many children.

Other reasons some are detained: wearing a face veil, having a passport without traveling internationally, strong religious family traditions, owning illegal books, having a family member who used to be in jail.

The Chinese Foreign Minister claims that diplomats and media are welcome to see Xinjiang training camps for themselves, that they are benign. But CNN tried to visit and was blocked by local authorities from doing so.

from CNN

Watched

Surveillance has never been done on the scale that China is now implementing. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is putting 600 million cameras in place to watch its citizens. Facial recognition AI enables them to watch and judge.

Each citizen receives a social score showing a level of approval or disapproval based on behavior like video game purchases and traffic violations. The CCP may then punish by restricting freedoms relating to travel, education, internet access, etc.

Western countries don't approve of this social control. Especially, we don't approve of the huge "training centers" set up to "train" minority Uyghurs in the northwest province of Xinjiang--centers that look like forced brain-washing camps.

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A document has been leaked showing the judgment metrics used to "detain" Uyghurs in Xinjiang. That's tomorrow's post.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Vaccine

It's now widely reported that the World Health Organization(WHO) has officially designated COVID-19, the corona virus, as a pandemic (widespread, affecting a high percentage of people). 

"[T]the number of cases outside of China has increased 13-fold over the last two weeks and the number of countries infected has tripled."

But good news is on the horizon. An oral vaccine is on track in Israel for public use after a few months of testing and paperwork. "State-funded Migal Galilee institute has been working for 4 years on a vaccine that could be customized for various viruses, so it had a head start when COVID-19 emerged."

This new oral vaccine "turn this disease into a very mild cold.”

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"Stay home"

Handwashing just isn't enough in Google's opinion. To hinder the spread of corona virus, Google has told an amazing 100,000 employees to work from home (unless their job requires them to come to the office).

They recommend "social distancing" as well.

Other big tech companies are doing something similar, but Google affects the most employees. They're mostly on the west coast of the U.S. 

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from Forbes

Handwashing

Good advice from . . Vietnam.

Blind spot 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Alex cites the example of Venezuela, where socialism was chosen when they democratically voted for Hugo Chavez in 1998. 

"Look no further than Venezuela for an example of how an allegedly socialist utopia necessarily leads to a communist crackdown. We are watching history repeat itself. As the socialist system collapses, Maduro implements tyranny. That’s how it works. That’s how it always works."

Alex believes that fans of socialism have not been told the whole story, that they have been educated by elites with a huge blind spot.

"My grandmother passed away in 1995 and my grandfather died last month. It is in their honor that I tell their story and on their behalf that I make this plea: Just like with Naziism, we must make it socially unacceptable to express any positive sentiments toward socialism or communism. Its 100 million victims cry out."

Blind spot 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

A common misconception, in Alex's view, is that socialism and communism are completely different. But the former will lead to the latter because of . . simple human nature.

In theory, "the people" own the businesses, the means of production. No person owns his farm or shop. The people elect leaders who then control all "the people's" businesses, buying and selling ("centralized planning"). But leaders are still flawed human beings.

"Powerful elites take charge. This group, which usually consists of a charismatic individual and his politically loyal kleptocrats, becomes the true owners of the means of production. They exist largely to serve themselves, so voices of opposition must be suppressed. Free speech is abandoned and, eventually, fair elections are too."

To hang on to their power, elites get more oppresssive. "The people" must be controlled. Individual persons must fall in line. "The people" gave their freedoms away and live to regret it.

Blind spot

Calling himself the "Junk Science Debunker," Alex Berezow is a microbiologist and the VP of Science Communications at the American Council on Science and Health. But he contributed something quite different, not science, at USAToday two years ago. 

His grandmother grew up in Ukraine when it was part of the USSR. She would check her family members every morning to see if any had died in the night during the mass starvation implemented by USSR leader Joseph Stalin. 

Alex hears CNN and others praise socialism as being "cool" but his family history tells him a different story. It frustrates him that many Americans may know about Nazi crimes but are ignorant about Soviet (USSR) crimes.

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He says, "It is still fashionable for intellectuals — particularly those in the cozy confines of academia who never had to suffer under it — to praise the virtues of socialism. This white-washed version of history is a moral blind spot . . ."

From USAToday
(cont'd tomorrow)

A farmer

There's a lot to admire in the life and values of a farmer. A few decades ago, most of us knew that. Here's a heartfelt tribute to the lifestyle of a farmer, delivered to a Future Farmers of America audience by Paul Harvey in 1978.

Kwast & Musk

A 3-post series on the new U.S. Space Force started here two weeks ago. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Kwast explained his vision for the new force, as well as the reason why we very much need it. America must speed up its its program for innovative space technologies according to Kwast.

In a conversation last Friday with Air Force Lt. Gen. John Thompson in Orlando, it appears that Elon Musk agrees with much of what Kwast said at Hillsdale.

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Since "Economics is the foundation of war," and since in Elon's opinion China will surpass the U.S. economy by 2-3 times, China is a potential threat. 

He said, “If you have half the resources of the counterparty then you better be real innovative, if you’re not innovative, you’re going to lose.”

“I have zero doubt that if the United States doesn’t seek innovation in space it will be second in space.”